


Mark of Old Foes

by varething



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 02:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12049662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varething/pseuds/varething
Summary: Time goes on, but some things never change.





	Mark of Old Foes

**Author's Note:**

> In which Nanaki follows a pattern, and finds a problem.

They bury her outside of Kalm, because the ground near Edge and Midgar is too dry to dig graves, because it’s a peaceful corner of the world and because it’s where Marlene lives right now, with her two boys, one near grown. There’s a pattern to it, Nanaki thinks, as he pads up the path, surrounded by the scent of sweat and flowers. A definite pattern.

First, the cold ring of the PHS, the name “Cloud Strife” flashing up when they all knew Tifa had been barely holding on for the last few months. The voice on the other end hadn’t sounded broken, or scared; it was as businesslike as always.

“Last night. She never woke up.”

Cloud hadn’t said he was all right. Nanaki hadn’t asked. They’d carried on the conversation as long as it needed to be, and then he’d gone and howled for a bit at the edge of the Gi Caves, near his father’s body where the full moon rose.

Travel, next. Nanaki took the shortest route through the canyon down towards Banora, where they’d built a Ropeway station some thirty years ago, and went from there to the cape south of Costa del Sol where the airships docked. He went alone, instead of meeting up with Barret, who’d gone back to Lifestream seven years ago, or Vincent, whom no one saw anymore except at the funerals, where he was impeccably dressed and always on time.

Kalm, he’d reminded himself, because the place was always different. Because the trans-ocean airships ran only twice every day, and he’d be late if he boarded the wrong one.

Nanaki knew most of the pilots - they’d been trained by Cid or Cid’s younger son, Pol - and he wasn’t bothered by the stares of the other passengers; he’d gotten used to that sort of thing a long time ago. More bothersome to sit, and wait, with hunger a dull pit in his belly - it had been Grandfather’s custom to fast before funerals, and Tifa had liked Grandfather.

_Had_ liked.

It was part of the pattern to use the travel time to accustom himself to the past tense. Had liked. Had done. Was.

When they’d set down outside of Edge, Denzel was waiting for him. His pants and jacket were black, his hair striped with gray. He smelled of jasmine soap and slightly of an old Midgar whiskey, and his eyes were wet.

“Hey,” he’d greeted, as though he were twelve, instead of fifty-four. “Highwinds beat you here.”

“They always do,” Nanaki had said, bowing his head. “Are you well?”

“I’m all right. She was…she went quietly. Cloud says she was smiling - he wouldn’t make it up.”

Perhaps he wouldn’t have, but then, Nanaki thought, Cloud knew the patterns as well as any of them, and Cloud would know what to tell his surrogate son. Nanaki had kept this to himself. In his mind, Denzel was still young; compared to him, Denzel _was_. The footsteps following his simply had a slower cadence than they’d had all those years ago.

“When are we going?” Nanaki had asked, as a sudden wave of tiredness reminded him that he’d been traveling for a full day and a half.

To his relief, Denzel said, “Tomorrow,” and that was part of the pattern, too - the rest before the putting to rest. It fit.

A sudden sharp breeze brings him back to the moment; the slow procession has halted at last and they’re speaking the same words, the refrain of a lifelong song. Words about the children Tifa raised, the friends she helped, the places and people that would always bear the mark of her.

There is never any mention of them saving the world, as if it, too, is a thing already buried.

Nanaki looks around at the two hundred gathered - the strange family Tifa has left behind. Tonight, the venerable Yuffie Kisaragi will trade reminiscings with Cid Highwind, Sr., and when his versions clash with hers she’ll blame it on his senility or his cigarettes, as the mood strikes her. Right now she holds his shoulder in the place of his deceased - his wife and daughter and Cid Jr., the oldest son - and they are only another couple of people in a crowd.

Cloud never speaks at funerals, and he doesn’t here: Denzel says his piece, and Marlene, then Marlene’s boys, and Yuffie, stepping away from Cid with tears in her eyes. Through the whole thing Nanaki keeps his head down, breathing in the smell of the earth instead of the smell of wet, gray sky; he dreams of afterwards, when he’ll chase down some wandering bandersnatch and sink his teeth deep into its throat.

He doesn’t like funerals. He comes to those of his friends, because they were his friends, and because he thinks they would have appreciated it. But he doesn’t mourn now: Tifa has gone back to the Lifestream, and will float there in the green cool softness until she bumps up against the souls of Aerith, Barret, Reeve, or the others she knew. This is a pattern, too, though one he cannot see or touch or smell.

There is nothing of her in the earth now. Near Kalm, where no reactors have ever been built, the Lifestream runs far beneath the surface, so that even the deepest breath brings only a hint of mako scent.

Still, Nanaki stays. He’d liked Tifa.

It is in that moment, with his head near the ground, that he first smells the odd thing. He sniffs, his good eye on his paws. It is familiar, this smell: an old, black smell, thick as cold leather, sharp as bright steel. His shoulders tighten, and his tail quivers, just slightly.

But the smell stays mingled in with others. It doesn’t deepen, or change, or move. And so he lets it be.

When they’ve all done with talking, and the sky has darkened, the air wet with anticipation, the lines of people begin to move off. Avalanche’s extended family, the friends and acquaintances of Tifa Lockheart, all start to shift towards shelter. He hears the high cackle of Yuffie’s voice as she begins some story, but he stays where he is, until there is only him, and three others, standing near the small tombstone.

Cloud Strife hasn’t moved through the entire ceremony. This, too, is normal, expected. Nanaki had always thought it was guilt that made him wait - guilt for not speaking; guilt for not keeping them all together; guilt for being sixty-nine and still looking twenty-one. Somehow he’s never noticed the stillness of Cloud’s shoulders, something like nerves drawing the muscles tight; the stance of a warrior on enemy ground, unarmed.

Somehow he’s never seen the other man, who walks up now and kneels before the grave.

“Don’t do that,” Cloud snaps, and from the other comes a near inaudible chuckle. Cloud barrels on: “She hated you as much as I did. Maybe more.”

“Exactly why I’m here, Cloud,” says Sephiroth. His face and hair are hidden beneath a black cloak, so like a reaper’s shroud that Nanaki wonders if he’d eased Tifa along her way. That’s wrong, though, and he shakes the thought off. He cannot imagine Sephiroth easing anyone into anything.

They speak a little more in low voices that he has to strain to hear, and so he walks closer, paws silent on the soft earth. He isn’t afraid, not exactly, though his old scars twinge at the sound of that voice, and his mouth waters as the smell thickens.

“…strong,” Sephiroth is saying. “You haven’t kept me from the others.”

“She wouldn’t want you here.”

“Does it matter what she would or would not want, Cloud?”

“You said - ”

“I spoke of hatred which has left a void in its wake. Do you know nothing of honoring one’s enemies?”

Cloud lets out a sound that could be a laugh, a cough, or a stifled sob. None of these, to Nanaki, seem appropriate responses. Even less appropriate, Cloud’s name in that voice, in that mouth: it raises all of the fur along Nanaki’s spine. Cloud does not speak after that, and the first raindrops fall into the silence left. The two men, Cloud and the black-caped intruder, do not stir at this, or at the forks of lightning on the horizon, the thunder’s echoing boom.

So intent on them, Nanaki forgets about the third man - that is, until Vincent bends over him and says, “It would be best if we left now.”

Strange how that makes him start in a way that Sephiroth did not. It’s something about Vincent, about his footsteps, which are truly soundless, about the fact that underneath the fabric of his clothing and the smell of rain, he has no scent whatsoever.

“Is it wise?”

“He always waits. He wishes to speak to the dead, alone.”

“He is not alone,” Nanaki growls, but Vincent’s blood-colored eyes fix on him; his metal arm glistens in the wet, a remnant clear as the number ‘XIII’ branded onto Nanaki’s skin.

“He has only his memories,” says Vincent, “as do all of us who walk this earth.”

Without another word, Vincent retreats. Nanaki covers his barely visible footprints with deep, paw-shaped indentations, and he looks back only once. Perhaps it is the rain. A trick of the early evening light. But Cloud Strife, hair damp, head bowed, is standing before Tifa Lockheart’s grave, and there is no one at his side.


End file.
